Mistresses: Bound with Gold / Bought with Emeralds

Regan had been forced to act pleased and thank him nicely.

‘It’s fully waterproof and shockproof, so you can safely forget you’ve got it on,’ he’d told her. ‘You can even wear it washing your hair in the shower, if you like, though perhaps you’re the kind of woman who prefers to do it in the bath.’

He had stood smiling at her blandly while Regan’s eyes had spat violet fire, her composure almost destroyed by the vivid mental video of Joshua as he had been That Night, his tapered torso slick with soapy water as he’d braced his shoulders against the curving back of the marble bath and lifted her astride him with dripping arms, bringing her hard down on his up-thrust hips, churning up the waves until a tsunami of sensation had almost drowned them both!

His eyes had flickered to the band on her wrist and she’d felt it like a mark of his possession as he goaded softly, ‘How fortunate that you don’t appear to be as allergic to platinum as you are to gold…’

‘You’ve left footprints all over the place, you know.’

‘What?’ Regan wrenched herself from her memories to find Ryan edging closer to her terminal. ‘Where?’ She automatically looked down at the carpet.

‘On those files you’ve just been altering…you’re leaving a trail that any competent hacker could follow.’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’ she said hollowly.

‘It’s just a clumsy way of doing it, that’s all. I mean, I think the actual idea is clever,’ Ryan said kindly. ‘You have a printing company that in the process of long, legal winding-up has discovered a breach of its former contract with Palm Cove Developments that invokes a lump-sum penalty repayment clause. It’s just that if the data and dates don’t match up in all those files by the time the bank cheque arrives, your tampering is going to look pretty obvious to an expert…’

Regan was speechless.

‘I could do it, you know!’ Ryan’s eyes shone with enthusiasm. ‘I could hack in and manipulate the software to completely obliterate any sign you’d been in there. Or, I could use a very specific virus that would corrupt the data if anyone tried to call up the original file on that contract—’

‘No! Ryan—you don’t know what you’re saying!’

‘Yes, I do. I’ve been hacking around in the system and tracking what everyone’s doing for days,’ he confided. ‘The security here really sucks and the passwords are a joke.’ He grinned at her. ‘You’re trying to put money back into the system, aren’t you? Sort of like Robin Hood in reverse—’

‘Nothing like Robin Hood!’ Regan was horrified by his admiration. ‘For goodness’ sake, Ryan, what I’m doing is dishonest!’ She bit her lip; she hadn’t meant to admit anything.

‘Yeah, but for a good cause—you didn’t steal it, right?’ he stated, with an absolute confidence that she found unbearably touching. ‘You’re obviously just covering for someone else. Those files you were extracting were originally created with a password held by Michael Frances—I checked. Hey, I hope you haven’t forgotten there’ll be back-up files somewhere, too…’

Regan propped her head on her hand and closed her eyes, appalled that her sins had found her out before she had barely even begun. ‘No, I haven’t forgotten—that was the first thing I did, because the back-ups are kept at the legal office, where I work. Michael was my husband,’ she sighed. ‘Before he died he skimmed off the money by awarding contracts for printing posters and sales brochures to a fictitious firm, while he actually had the job done at a cheaper price.’

‘Cool!’

Her head jerked up. ‘No, it is not cool, Ryan!’ she hissed furiously, surreptitiously checking that there was no one else in the vicinity. ‘It’s outright theft. It’s totally immoral and wrong. And what I’m doing is wrong, too. It’s nothing to be proud of!’

‘So why’re you doing it?’

She shook her head helplessly. How could she explain the reckless anger that had driven her to act so out of character?

His bony, tanned hand slid over the top of her twisting fingers. ‘Hey, look it’s OK. I’m not going to squeal. I know if I help you we can make this work, with a few modifications—’

She wouldn’t let herself even contemplate it. Help him cheat and lie and deceive the one he loved? The way that Michael had?

‘No—I don’t want you involved in any way.’

‘But I already am involved!’

That was undeniable. Shared knowledge made them coconspirators. ’The correct thing for you to do would be to go straight to someone of authority in the company and tell them what I’ve done,’ she forced herself to say. ‘Or at least tell your father,’ she said, flinging herself on her sword.

‘Tell Dad? Are you crazy! Why would I want to tell him anything? Let Dad find his own fun!’

Fun? Regan looked at him as though he was an alien being. It must be the generation gap, she thought. He might be an intellectual genius, but physically and emotionally he was still a teenager, super-charged on his surging hormones. In contrast she felt as jaded as an old hag.

‘I’m glad you feel that way, Ryan, because that’s exactly what I intend doing.’

Regan’s jaded feeling vanished in the instant it took for the deep voice to reach down inside her chest and caress her heart into violent action. Her swivel chair was spun on its pedestal and braked to a stop with one immaculate, custom-made Italian leather shoe.

Joshua crooked his finger at her. ‘Come on. It’s quitting time, and you and I are going for a little ride.’

It sounded like something a Mafia Don would say to a double-crossing Capo. Just how much had he overheard?

‘I—I’ve never had anything to do with horses,’ she said, feebly resisting the inevitable. ‘I wouldn’t know how to ride.’

His eyelids drooped. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Riding a horse is just like staying on top of any other form of mount—you grip with your thighs and allow your body to follow through with the motion of your hips. I’m sure you’d be a natural…’ As she crimsoned he continued smoothly, ‘But actually I was talking about a boat ride.’ He turned to his son. ‘We’re going on a short cruise out into the gulf, and, since Carolyn has frequently reminded me that Regan hasn’t yet had a sail, I’m taking her with us. I presume you can amuse yourself here for another hour or so, since there seem to be a few others working late—otherwise you can use your key to the condo…’

Ryan couldn’t help his eyes darting triumphantly to Regan. ‘Sure!’ he said, bounding to his feet.

‘I’ll just have a word with the office manager before we go. WadeCo has someone coming in to look at the books next week as part of the discovery process, and I just want to make sure that he’s happy with the arrangements…’

As soon as Joshua was out of earshot Regan stumbled out of her chair and grabbed Ryan by the sleeve of his T-shirt. ‘Promise you won’t do anything stupid about my—’ she dropped her voice even lower ‘—my problem while I’m gone!’

He squinted down at her anxious face, thoughtfully chewing his lip.

‘I mean it, Ryan.’ She made her voice as stern as possible, considering that she had nothing with which to back up her threat. ‘No dumb and misguided attempts at chivalry. Promise?’

He nodded slowly, something like relief shimmering behind the glasses. ‘OK, I can certainly promise that.’

She released him and smoothed his wrinkled T-shirt back into place. ‘Sorry, but I don’t want you getting in trouble on my account. This isn’t a game, understand?’

‘Sure.’ He pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘I understand.’

She was too busy worrying about Joshua’s motives to hear the lilt of resolution in the breaking voice. ‘You notice he didn’t ask me if I wanted to go on a cruise. I wonder who else is going to be on board?’ she wondered nervously. So far she had managed to keep away from the twenty-fivemetre luxury motor vessel. On board, she felt Joshua would have a home territory advantage.

‘Well, there’ll be the crew for a start—that’s at least five. It’s really cool, Regan, and has a spa pool and sauna. Uncle Chris and Carolyn used to say it was better than a posh hotel and they were going to use it for their honeymoon cruise!’

Regan frowned at him. ‘You mean your father and Carolyn—’

‘No, I mean when Uncle Chris and Carolyn were like…you know—together…’

‘When they were what?’

He blinked at her vehemence. ‘Uh—didn’t you know?’ he said, speculation rife in his face. ‘Carolyn was Uncle Chris’s girlfriend for ages. They even got engaged, but a couple of months ago there was this big blow-up between them and then suddenly it was Dad she was marrying…’

The tense atmosphere between the brothers, Carolyn’s attitude and the Harrimans’ odd manner whenever Chris was mentioned—all were suddenly explained…

Regan emerged from the coolness of the office into the dazzle of the hot, late-afternoon sun in a zombie-like mentalfog. She trotted alongside Joshua’s tall, striding figure as they crossed the cobbled paving, weaving around the clover-leaf arrangement of shops and cafés on the graduated series of curving terraces which descended to the edge of the circular head of the canal. Most of the bars and cafés had outdoor tables, shaded by umbrellas, and were doing a good business from the tanned boaties and residents and sunburned tourists who were starting to wind down, or up, from their day’s activities.

Joshua led Regan along the wide wooden boardwalk past the first few berths to where the Sara Wade lay snoozing at her moorings. She was sleek and white, her streamlined cabins rising two storeys above the main deck, the roof bristling with antennae and electronic gadgetry.

‘Sara was my stepmother’s name,’ explained Joshua, as he motioned her ahead of him up the short gangplank. He had slipped off his jacket and pocketed his yellow knitted silk tie as they walked, opening his collar and rolling up the sleeves of his white linen shirt to look the epitome of laid-back style.

‘What about your real mother?’ murmured Regan, still grappling with the impact of Ryan’s words.

‘She died when I was two—of breast cancer. I don’t remember much about her. Dad married Sara when I was five. Careful.’

Regan had tripped on a wooden slat on the gangplank. ‘I don’t think I’m dressed for boating,’ she said, looking down at her high-heeled sandals. The trim, lightweight tailored navy suit she was wearing was also more suited to an office than a quarter-deck. Regan hoped she wouldn’t feel out of place amongst a crowd of people in smart-butcasual nautical gear.

‘You can slip into something more comfortable on board.’ She slanted him a suspicious look over her shoulder and he chuckled. ‘We have lots of non-skid boat shoes on board in most sizes. There’s sure to be a pair to fit you.’

His manner seemed so relaxed and unthreatening now that they were on board that Regan felt even more disorientated. Where was the implacable sense of urgency that she had sensed when he had swooped down on her at the office?

A fit, grey-headed, middle-aged man dressed in white shorts and short-sleeved shirt stood stiffly at the top of the gangplank, a white yachting cap tucked under his arm.

‘Welcome aboard, sir—ma’am.’

‘It’s all right, Grey, she’s a friend, not a client—we don’t have to make an impression,’ said Joshua drily.

The man’s shoulders relaxed and he grinned, his teeth white in his weather-beaten face as he replaced his blackbrimmed cap. ‘What a shame. I’ve been practising my snappy salute.’

‘This is Regan. I believe she gets seasick in small boats,’ Joshua supplied wickedly.

‘Then you won’t have a problem with Sara Wade,’ Grey told her kindly. ‘She’s as solid as a rock.’

‘Don’t rocks usually sink?’ said Regan.

‘Not a rock with this much horsepower,’ he smiled. ‘This baby could raise the Titanic.’

‘Don’t get him started,’ said Joshua. ‘It really is his baby. Grey has captained her since she was commissioned. You can cast off whenever you like, Grey—we’ll be down on the aft deck, but I might bring Regan up later to show her the view from the bridge.’

‘Aye, aye, sir.’ This time Grey did salute, a careless, irreverent flick of his brim which made Regan smile.

‘Let’s go the long way round, so you can see where everything is,’ said Joshua, opening the door to the main cabin and discarding his jacket and tie on the nearest chair.

The polished mahogany walls, maple floors and plush white and gold furnishings of the huge lounge were sumptuous, and the dining table in the next room looked as if it would easily seat twenty under the glittering modern chandelier.The U-shaped galley further forward was bigger and better equipped than some restaurant kitchens Regan had seen. Down a companionway there were four large double cabins with en suite bathrooms, the main bathroom and a sauna. Distracted by the confusion in her mind and the proximity of her guide, Regan was nonetheless stunned by the opulence of the gold-plated fixtures and fittings and coordinated furniture and fabrics.

Beneath their feet was an almost imperceptible vibration as a powerful engine purred into life, and when she murmured something about conspicuous consumption Joshua said, ‘We bought it from an American billionaire who fell on hard times. We use it mainly for corporate entertaining, here and overseas—for events like the America’s Cup—or charter it to visiting business-people who don’t like to stay in hotels.’

Following him back up the companionway, Regan guessed that the weekly charter fees would cost more than the average New Zealander earned in a year!

While they’d been below the boat had left the slips, and as they stepped onto the aft deck Regan could see the marina terraces recede behind a forest of masts as they cruised around the first curve in the broad canal. But it was what she didn’t see that concerned her. ‘Where are the others?’

‘Others?’ Joshua leaned sideways on the brass rail, plucking a pair of sunglasses from the breast pocket of his shirt and sliding them on his face.

‘You said, “We’re going on a short cruise—”’

‘And so we are. Grey has had some minor adjustments done on the satellite navigation system and he just wanted to give her a brief shake-down run—’

‘But you mentioned Carolyn, and I assumed…’ She trailed off at his sardonic smile. He hitched up the knee of his black trousers and rested his foot on the lower rail.

‘I’ve told you about the danger of making assumptions where I’m concerned.’

‘You deliberately led me to think that you were taking a bunch of people out,’ she accused huskily.

He turned aside the challenge with a lazy smile. ‘You seem to be rather stressed-out lately. I thought you might appreciate the chance to get away from all the cares of the world for an hour or two.’

Since he was a major source of her stress, that seemed unlikely. ‘What if I want to go back?’

‘We can’t ever turn back the clock…so forward seems the only logical place for us to go.’ He shifted his stance, casually crossing his long legs at the ankle as he rested his elbow on the rail. ‘What were you and my son talking so earnestly about when I found you?’

She stiffened. She couldn’t see his eyes, but the stillness of his face suggested a penetrating watchfulness. She moved up to press her stomach against the rail, using the excuse of leaning over to study the boats they were passing to show him a delicate, unrevealing profile.

Now was her chance to do the honourable thing. To forestall any future trouble for Ryan with a full and frank confession. She would have to trust to Joshua’s strong sense of justice, and the compassion she now knew he possessed, and hope that he would appreciate the honesty of her intentions…

‘He has a crush on you, you know.’

Her head whipped around, as he had known it would, the glossy hair flaring out from her skull in a blue-black spray.

‘Ryan? Don’t be ridiculous!’ spilled out of her lips.

‘The more attention you pay him, the more likely he is to presume that you mean something by it,’ he told her.

She lifted her chin. ‘I do: it means I like him.’

‘In spite of him being my son?’ he guessed, putting a finger on her dilemma.

‘He’s a very nice boy,’ she sniffed.

‘He wouldn’t thank you for calling him a boy. He’s a

young man, filled with a young man’s passions…’

And foolish ideals.

Regan bit her lip and he turned to join her at the rail, his shoulder brushing against her navy sleeve as he bent to lean on both elbows, looking down into their lightly churning wake. ‘Ryan loves complexity and finds any sort of mystery irresistible. You can’t blame him for being intrigued, you’re probably the most complex woman he’s ever encountered. Add big violet eyes and a sleek little body to the equation and you have a perfect recipe for infatuation. He may think his intellect will protect him from emotional harm, but he doesn’t realise that some emotions are not always answerable to reason…’

That was cutting too close to the bone. She looked at his bowed head, noting the way the breeze ruffled his hair, and the silky black growth on his muscled forearm. ‘I really think you’re overreacting—I’m just a novelty—’

‘He watches you when he thinks you aren’t looking…’

She tore her yearning gaze away from his averted head.

‘So? You have no idea what’s going on inside his brain.’

‘I know how males think. And I know Ryan better than most men know their sons.’

‘I just don’t think he thinks about me that way,’ she said feebly. ‘You make it sound as if I’m some kind of femme fatale…’

He straightened up, removing his sunglasses, and she immediately wished he would put them back on. His eyes made her stomach lurch. Then she realised there was a physical reason for her reaction; they were moving out of the mouth of the canal into the light chop of the channel which extended from a half-melon of sandy beach—dotted with family groups taking advantage of the school holidays—to the open gulf.

‘And you make it sound as if you don’t believe you’re innately attractive to men. That unless you set out to entice a man he’ll simply ignore your femininity. Why, I wonder?’

Regan’s fingers automatically moved to twist her absent wedding ring. ‘I’m not here for psychoanalysis,’ she rasped.

‘You sound a little dry,’ he said gently. ‘Would you like something to lubricate your throat while we argue the point?’ He signalled to someone out of Regan’s sight-line, and she completely lost her train of thought when she saw who it was bringing forward the silver tray.

‘Champagne cocktail or tropical crush, Mam’selle Eve?’

She blushed furiously at the sight of his ugly face, pruned into a wrinkled smile. ‘Hello, Pierre,’ she said faintly, grabbing the nearest drink without caring what it contained.

‘Actually, her name is Regan,’ Joshua told his man, accepting a stemmed glass of straw-coloured liquid containing a hulled strawberry. ‘She prefers to reserve Evangeline for those occasions when she’s incognito.’

Regan jerked around to remonstrate, and fruit juice spilled out of her glass down the lapel of her jacket.

‘Ah, Mam’selle, let me sponge that out for you before it stains.’ The glass was taken out of her hand and her jacket removed and borne away into the air-conditioned depths of the vessel before she could do much more than stutter a protest.

‘I think you might be safer with the champagne,’ said Joshua, handing her one of the tall cocktails, his eyes flicking over the white singlet top she had worn under her navy suit.

‘How did you find out my middle name?’ she demanded.

Joshua toasted her with his glass. ‘I asked around.’

She knew what that meant for a man of his wealth and power.

‘You mean you had me investigated,’ she snapped.

‘Do you blame me?’

No, that was the problem. It was what she would have done were their circumstances reversed.

‘I hope you got your money’s worth,’ she gritted.

The prow of the boat eased higher in the water as a low grumble signalled a surge of power from the throttle, and as Regan listed on the wooden decking in a belated attempt to find her sea legs Joshua reached out to steady her, his fingers firm on her waist. The breeze became a tugging wind as the vessel cut through the water with smoothly accelerating speed and the airstream flowed around the sleekly aerodynamic body to flute invisibly above the turbulent wake.

‘Not yet.’ His steadying hand dropped away. ‘I’m only getting my reports in dribs and drabs. And it’s mostly raw facts, not feelings. Care to fill in the blanks?’

He waited, and when she said nothing he continued with surgical precision.

‘With such a fanatically religious mother and a passive alcoholic as a father you were bound to grow up sexually repressed and hungry for praise and affection—you must have been a sitting duck for a manipulative, smooth-talking bastard like Frances. He found out about your connection with Sir Frank and deliberately set out to recreate himself in the image of your ideal husband. But he never intended to be faithful to the image, did he?’

Regan sucked in a sharp breath. Laid out in his stark words the truth seemed even more ugly. ‘You have no right—’

‘I’ve been there myself,’ he said quietly. ‘I know how it feels to realise that your loyalty has been secured by a lie. You blame yourself for not seeing it from the beginning.’

‘I don’t want to talk about him.’

‘Fine. Then let’s talk about us.’

She set her untasted drink sharply down on the glass table which held the silver drinks tray. ‘There is no us!’

He set his glass beside hers and shadowed her back to the rail. ‘Tell me, why did you come to the apartment that night?’

‘Why don’t you ask your informant?’ she said bitterly.

‘What happened that night was not part of his brief,’ he said with dangerous softness. ‘But that could change with one phone call…’

She blanched. ‘My flatmate’s cousin is Cleo—she was the one who was supposed to meet you that night, but she was sick. I took her place, but I didn’t tell anyone. No one knew—not even Derek.’

‘That explains how, but not why,’ he said, his eyes narrowed intently on her face. ‘It’s so out of character with everything else I’ve found out about you.’

‘Maybe I was wild with grief,’ she said sardonically.

But he was implacable. ‘A kind of grief, perhaps. Was it anything to do with Cindy Carson visiting your flat? You never knew your husband had had a mistress, did you? Not until she confronted you.’

Regan thought that she would have preferred being interrogated about her attempt to fiddle the books to this painful emotional plunder!

‘How did you feel when you found out that he had been unfaithful to you for years?’ he goaded. ‘How did you feel when you discovered that he had chosen to have a child with her, rather than you?’

The old, volcanic rage erupted through the thin crust of her self-control. ‘How do you think I felt?’ she burst out.

His eyes flamed with deep satisfaction as he taunted, ‘Heartbroken?’

She tossed her head defiantly, the wind whipping the hair around her stinging cheeks. ‘No—heart-whole! Cured of any lingering doubt that I was a fool for having loved him at all! Sick. Angry. Furious!

‘You want to know what I was looking for that night I slept with you—I’ll tell you: Revenge!’ She gave a wild, triumphant laugh at his shaken expression. ‘I did it purely for revenge, OK? To show Michael that he wasn’t going to control me from the grave, to prove that I was as much a sexual being as his flashy mistress. He had an affair so I went out and had one, too!’

‘You slept with me to get revenge on a dead man?’

He sounded incredulous. She hoped that knocked his male ego for a six.